


Close Quarters

by deracine



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Fix-It of Sorts, Mutual Pining, Post-Season/Series 07, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 06, Season/Series 07, canon compliant through s7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:15:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23270833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deracine/pseuds/deracine
Summary: "They think he smiles out of the joy of being alive. The trouble is, he’s not alive. Not yet. There’s a world of difference between being corporeal and being alive."Shiro comes to terms with the clone's body, with life outside the astral plane, and his feelings for Keith. It takes a while.* * * * *
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Hunk & Keith & Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt & Shiro, James Griffin/Keith (Voltron), Keith/Shiro (Voltron), Lance & Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 63





	Close Quarters

They all think he’s grateful to be back. He is, most of the time. 

They all expect him to lead with patented Shiro optimism (Hunk, who first named the robot beasts robeasts calls it Shiroptimism). They think he smiles out of the joy of being alive. The trouble is, he’s not alive. Not yet. There’s a world of difference between being corporeal and being alive. 

Krolia’s the only one who can tell. It might be because she’s the oldest, although between Alteans who have been frozen for ten thousand years, a rapidly growing space wolf, a quantum abyss, and Shiro’s overnight white hair, he can’t count age in scars, years, or miles travelled anymore.

“You’re still recovering,” Krolia says, as an intruder lands on the Black Lion while they fly through a canyon of ice cliffs escaping the Galra fighters chasing them. “I’ll do it.”

A glance passes between them, and Shiro concedes. Coran goes after her and disappears into some back room, and what he’s left with is the weight of Keith’s devotion, and the strange reminder that being alone together is suddenly more oppressive than when the others are around taking up the space. 

Shiro is trying to be patient with himself, to understand why, but minutes later they’re captured and placed in a small room where he and Keith stand on opposite sides and Lance fills the silence until Krolia shuts him up. Zethrid and Ezor dangle Pidge over them, and Shiro does nothing. His mind goes blank until they’re running down the hallway and ejecting into deep-space, clawing their way back to their lions. 

At first, it’s an accident that he ends up in the Green Lion. Keith has gone back to save Acxa, and the Green Lion ends up being the closest thing to fly to while his one-armed space-swimming is still completely off. They make it out, and learn from Acxa that they’ve been gone for deca-phoebs, and are walking back to the lions shell-shocked and Shiro walks right back into Green. Pidge gives him a look but says nothing. For a while. 

Later, when they’re on the road home, she says, “You can stay here as long as you need, but there’s two things I need you to know.”

“What’s that?” 

“While you were healing, I scanned your body for any leftover…  _ Haggar _ , and found something in your eye. She was watching us through you. I destroyed it.”

Shiro says nothing, and Pidge goes on, her calm voice presenting the information about yet another way his body has betrayed him, betrayed them all, as if she were reciting pi. 

“I downloaded the clone’s memories to see if I could identify anything he might have known, even subconsciously, that might be relevant. I’d been planning to use the quiet-time to go through them, but if now that you’re here, I’m starting to realize I’d be invading your privacy.”

“Pidge, if you hadn’t done that before, you’d all be dead right now. You don’t need to apologize.”

Pidge looks determined. “I’m not apologizing,” she says. Brave girl. 

“Then let’s look through those memories together,” Shiro says, and it must be the right thing because Pidge starts to launch herself into his arms. 

He steps back, a shiver going through him. He’s not ready for touch. The clone had needed to be holed up for a week with only Keith attending him before he was able to withstand the attention of others. These are the subtle ways in which he and the clone are the same. The others have all assumed he’d be touch-starved, and when he first woke up they all crowded around him in a burst of joy he’d accepted with a smile, but on an ongoing basis, in such close quarters, their love is like breathing in glass shards into his lungs. 

And Keith’s love… that’s a whole other story. 

“I need some time,” Shiro says.

“Well, we’ve got plenty of that,” Pidge says, smiling as she returns to the controls and launches a game on a side-screen. Of all of them, Keith might fancy himself a loner, but it really is only Pidge who genuinely doesn’t need people around her. 

Learning the clone’s memories with Pidge while the same memories live somewhere underneath a skin that feels foreign is a surreal experience. The watched memories show that the clone liked himself a whole lot more than Shiro likes him. The clone knew he was a leader, a survivor, a Champion. He had cheated death enough times to believe himself both invincible and infallible. He was more of a perfectionist, demanded more from himself and from the team. Especially from Keith. 

The clone watches Keith get back from the Blade of Marmora mission without even unfolding his arms for a hug. The clone is angry with Keith already, phrases his welcome as a command. 

_ You need to get to your lion and join them immediately _ , the clone says, and Shiro winces. The Keith he knows—knew—would have frowned and stormed off even at the insinuation of authority, never mind an actual order. 

Shiro wonders at it, the clone’s fury when it comes to Keith. Few things in this or any other universe frustrate Shiro with the exception of Slav, whose analysis-paralysis is anathema to Shiro’s strategic approach. But Keith’s decisiveness, even when impulsive, has always been a source of pride or worry, never anger. 

_ So why did the clone dislike Keith so much? _

It’s a physical dislike, covered up in a farewell hug that’s at least partially relief that Keith is going to be gone. It’s a parting gift for a person whose departure is more welcome than their presence. 

Now, in the Green Lion, Shiro doesn’t realize that Pidge has shut off the memories a long time ago. He’s lost in them, sweating in a corner, staring at a wall. Pidge is leaving him be, playing her game with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth. 

_ Keith would be at your side, moaning Shiro! Shiro! Shiro! until you finally gave him some reassurance that you were all right _ .

He hears the clone’s voice in his head sometimes. He recognizes it, of course. It sounds a lot like his father’s voice, one he’s heard in his head for a lot longer. It’s a leader’s voice that knows how to build trust by sharing the semblance of vulnerability, how to build a team by cultivating individual talents and interpersonal trust, how to drive up morale with a calm voice and effective words, and above all how to enforce the utmost self-discipline in the interest of perfection. It’s not a voice that knows how to follow. 

The druid who lured in and slaughtered the Blade of Marmora catches them all by surprise, but it’s Krolia’s plan to leave with Kolivan afterwards that’s the suckerpunch. He sees the pain on Keith’s face— _ what use is a leader who can’t keep a poker face, _ the clone asks—and Shiro pulls Keith away and back to the Lions to rip the bandaid off as fast as possible so the team doesn’t see their leader fall apart. 

Keith doesn’t though. He rallied for Krolia, said  _ I love you _ (again) but this time it wasn’t to hold Krolia back but to let her go. 

_ It’s a lie _ , the clone says.  _ Love is an obligation. Love is debt.  _

And that’s the thing. Keith’s love is a debt that can never be repaid, and neither Shiro nor the clone have any experience dealing with something like that. 

“I think he knows,” Pidge says, out of the blue. “I think Keith knows you’re avoiding him.”

“I’m not—” Shiro begins, and then trails off. They’re having food teleported to them on trays that hover at a position where even one-armed he can eat without difficulty, and his reply wouldn’t have been very productive. He’s not avoiding Keith. He’s avoiding all of them. He doesn’t want to tell Hunk that he can’t really taste the food yet, or tell Lance that he’s  _ really annoyingly loud  _ compared to the astral plane, or ask Allura what it felt like to hold his entire being in her hands to mould like clay. It’s just a coincidence that he  _ also _ doesn’t want to talk to Keith who keeps talking about how they saved each other, especially if he end up accidentally making a joke about how they’ve disfigured each other too.

“You might owe him an explanation,” Pidge says.

“I owe him a lot more than that, unfortunately.” 

Pidge gives him a sharp look. “Ah,” she says, as if that explains everything. Maybe it does. 

When they land on earth, it’s only Shiro who notices the contemptuous look that Griffin throws Keith. Most of the others don’t know Griffin from a yalmor, but Shiro had made it his business to know all the cadets he recruited, and he knows at least part of what Griffin said to Keith that led to that fateful punch was about him. 

_ Deal with interpersonal frictions by uniting people against a common enemy _ , the clone says helpfully. Shiro doesn’t bother trying to fix Griffin and Keith. Griffin throws a tantrum in the situation room about paladins not respecting authority, and nobody is surprised. They muddle through. 

_ You could have prevented that _ , the clone says. The subtext is clear: Shiro is no leader.

_ Also, Keith should learn to build bridges instead of simply burning them _ , the clone says. This time the subtext is less clear. 

_ Why do you hate him so much? _ Shiro asks, wondering if the clone knows to answer. If the clone is even still there, an entity in its own right, or if all he’s hearing in his head are echoes, voices of a person known well once, but who no longer exists. 

Just when he’s about to give up, the clone says,  _ Not me. We. _

His mind short-circuits again, and it’s a miracle he manages to get to the officers’ bathroom before dry-heaving in a sweaty panic. He tells no one. 

He spends the rest of the day hiding in the one-person bunk he’s been given, a luxury only available to senior officers. He grieves for Adam. He wonders uselessly whether he would have stayed, if he knew then what he does now. 

He grieves for Adam and the body that loved Adam, a body he no longer has. It was a body that endured suffering with defiance, fought off disease, loved recklessly, fought ruthlessly. It was a body that for all its failings would rally at the thought of sex, give itself joyously over to pleasure. This body is a hypocrite. It cares deeply about power and strength, but knows nothing of surrendering to desire. 

He’s suspected for a while that this body no longer carries the disease that was slowly killing him, and one day when this is all over he’ll get tested discreetly. But his old body was like a worn pair of jeans, frayed and yet known. This body is plastic and metal perfection, and what little flesh remains carries memories of cruelty and rage. 

Allura calls him over to the workbay, and he wonders if she can see his red-rimmed eyes. Instead she shows him the new prosthetic she’s created. For long minutes he can’t speak, overcome simultaneously with real gratitude and just as real dread. She wants so much to please him. They have each made their offerings and penance to make up for not realizing the clone wasn’t really him. Allura has the least to feel guilty about. Out of all the paladins, she knew him the least well. But maybe this is about Lotor, and about a different debt entirely, and her demons have nothing to do with him at all. 

“Thanks, Allura.”

She doesn’t try to hug him. It’s not her way. 

“If you’re okay with it, I’ll talk to Sam.” She hesitates. “It’s different than the Galra arm. It won’t connect to you directly. We’ll have to put you under for a while to refit the port.” 

She means removing the stump he’s left with, and that more than anything makes him choke. He wants it gone. Mirrors hadn’t been a thing they cared about in space, but they’re in every bathroom here on earth, and he can’t stand to look at his body anymore. 

He nods. He feels the strange sense that he ought to talk to Keith first, and the clone surges back with an indescribable fury. 

_ It’s not his place to decide what happens with this body. _

Ah. 

It may have been Allura who placed his consciousness in this body, but it’s Keith the clone blames for the decision. 

“What if,” Shiro asks, and then stops.

“Yes, Shiro?” Allura is so soft, so eager to help. 

“What if the clone body rejects this too?” 

Crows’ feet appear by Allura’s kind eyes. “Oh, Shiro.”

“Promise me something, Allura. If this goes sideways, you’ll let me go.”

“You know I can’t do that, Shiro. You’re too important.”

“I’m not a paladin anymore.”

She frowns, as if she doesn’t understand what one has to do with the other. Allura, who berated Keith on his recklessness and repeatedly offered to sacrifice herself if it would protect the paladins. 

“Would you like to talk to Keith first?” she asks.

He frowns before he can help it, in the effort to shut down the voice in his head before it says something unforgivable. 

What comes out of his mouth instead is just as unforgivable, but at least it’s his. 

“Maybe I should. If this arm tries to kill him, he’ll end up slicing thin air if he tries to lop it off.”

Allura freezes.

“Sorry, bad joke.” He backs away. “Sorry. I really am grateful, Allura. Tell Sam I’m okay with it. Whenever he’s ready.”

He walks away with his face on fire. He knows Allura wouldn’t tell Keith, but he never should have said it in the first place. 

The surgery is the next morning. He foolishly assumes it’s the most dangerous part, and doesn’t want anyone there until he wakes up. There’s a moment of deja vu, waking up to blurry doctor-types who have been poking at him, and it sends his heart-rate skyrocketing, but then he sees the team watching through the glass. Keith has his arms crossed. He’s angry, and hiding it poorly. 

_ It’s none of his business _ , the clone says _. He can’t expect you to stay an invalid just because he wants to play nurse. _

The clone reaches for the arm eagerly, greedily. The arm, for all its size and power, is gentle, like all things Altean, and it doesn’t know what to do with the clone’s greed. Shiro’s consciousness was brittle to begin with, and he’s just coming out of surgery, and Shiro’s awake to hear one last thought before the clone takes over.

_ I can be a paladin again. _

It sends his vitals into overdrive and then into freefall. He hears shouting,  _ He’s crashing! _ And then nothing. Until he wakes up again. 

This time is different. For the first time in a long time, he’s alone in his head. He looks at his arm and the fist clenches on demand. Releases when he wills it. 

“I feel great!”

Keith still has his arms folded, but his shoulders sag in relief. He trails the others when they come in to see him. Pidge keeps her distance. He suffers hugs from Lance and Hunk, and a touch from Allura. Keith is smiling but closed off. 

Everyone leaves, and Keith stays behind. He says nothing, just waits expectantly. He’s learned a great deal by way of patience in very little time. Well, in two years on a space whale apparently. 

“I should have told you,” Shiro begins, but can’t bring himself to say he’s sorry.

Keith shrugs. “You chop off a guy’s arm one time, you can’t expect him to tell you he’s gone and got another.”

Shiro blinks. It’s a  _ terrible  _ joke. It’s a  _ Shiro- _ level terrible joke. The words are all wrong coming out of Keith’s mouth, and it’s one more way in which Keith’s love for him is the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to Shiro. 

“Keith.”

That’s it. That’s all he has.

“It’s all right, Shiro. You don’t owe me any explanations.” Keith turns to go, and then hesitates. He says over his shoulder, “If you wanted it, Black would let you be her paladin again.”

He wants it. Whatever harmonizing space-magic was contained in Allura’s crystal, the thoughts and memories seem to have braided together coherently. It’s just him in this body now, and he has to acknowledge something, at least to himself.

He was okay with Keith surpassing him, being his heir, when he knew he was going to die. Keith would have been his legacy. But now he’s not going to die. His muscles haven’t spasmed once in longer than he can remember. This body is healthy and knows it. And it wants its time in the sun. 

“Those who want to lead rarely ever make good leaders,” Krolia had told him once, while Keith was sleeping and they were all still in the Black Lion. “Among the Galra, there are many who want to lead, and not too many who can. Wanting to lead ought to disqualify you immediately. That’s why the Blade has no single leader. We listen to wisdom where we can find it, within ourselves or others.”

He looks up to tell Keith he doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but Keith is gone. 

He doesn’t know what he’s missing, not really, until Pidge comes over to analyze his new arm. 

“It’s a precaution,” she says, and gets to work.

“Can we look at his memories again?” he says. 

She pauses, then asks, “It would be one thing if you didn’t already remember. What is it you’re trying to find out?”

For once, he goes with honesty. “I need to know why I let Keith leave. Whether it was my idea or Haggar getting the one person who might have been able to tell something was wrong out of the picture.”

She chews her lip. “To be fair, we  _ all _ let Keith leave. He was a pretty awful leader the first time around. He didn’t know what he was doing, he barked out orders, expected everyone to just trust him, and broke away from us any time he felt we were holding him back.” 

“And this time?” 

She looks away. 

“Pidge.”

“Look, I just want to be the Green Paladin. I don’t really care which one of you is in Black. Hell, Hunk once wanted to be the head. He probably should be, since we’d all be dead if it wasn’t for him.”

“Pidge, you’re not going to hurt me by saying you prefer Keith leading the team.”

She looks skeptical, then she smiles. It’s not the trusting smile of the tiny Katie Holt he once shielded from the others who might discover her secret. It’s a wry smile of a teenage girl who’s one of the smartest people in the universe. 

“Shiro, it’s like dancing. There’s a lead and a follow. Some people, like Keith, or Lance, or even Allura, can do both although they might have a preference. Some can only lead. So we’ll reconfigure if we have to.”

She hits the nail on the head, every time. Shiro may have wanted Keith to be his legacy, but he doesn’t want Keith to be his commanding officer. 

It isn’t until much, much later, when he’s on the Atlas, getting everyone to their positions, when Coran whips out, “Captain,” and Sam says, “The bridge is yours,” that Shiro finally understands.

Deep down, below the Shiro-the-Hero nonsense, below Haggar’s conditioning, beneath even his deep-seated desire to be a paladin in real-life and in Monsters and Manna, Shiro has always wanted to fly his own ship. 

Adam tried to take that away from him. 

Keith actually took it. 

Took his ship, took his arm, took his team and his place, and then offered it all back without a moment’s hesitation, like it meant nothing to him. 

“Keith,” he calls out to the paladins, as they get into position. He just needs to keep saying the name. Each time he does, he feels a jolt run through his entire body. Anger, yes. Hurt too. But something else he never let himself name, because there’s no way he could feel  _ that _ vulnerable if there wasn’t love there too. 

The paladins get into positions and fire on the Zaiforge cannons, but something’s wrong. Sendak knows their plan, he’s ready for them. 

“Where’s Admiral Sanda?” 

He knows in his gut what happened since the briefing room. Knows that Admiral Sanda betrayed them with searing clarity. Of  _ course _ she thought there was a point negotiating. But she was doomed to fail. An ant cannot negotiate with the foot about to crush it. He remembers for a moment that it was Admiral Sanda who sent Adam out to die, and wishes that she gets the full measure of deadly fate that only the Galra can dish out, and immediately regrets his bloodthirsty rage. 

It’s too late to do anything, and he can only watch, slack-jawed, as Sendak takes the paladins out of the sky. 

The trained soldier in Shiro takes over, branching out to possibilities to save the paladins, save earth, save the Atlas, save the MFEs. More power, more focused weapons, predicting the enemy’s next move. This is what he’s good at, and he has faith in Keith. The faith pays off when the lions start paring through Galra cruisers like they’re made of nothing more substantial than flesh and blood. 

“We’re still on that ship!” Pidge cries out. “Well, our bodies are!”

“Amazing,” Shiro says, and it is. He’s always known that Keith had it in him, and the new Keith, this leader he doesn’t know as well, is different in one critical way. He doesn’t just believe in himself. He makes the team believe in their own capabilities. He trusts them, even when they didn’t trust him first. 

It’s a level of generosity Shiro, who has always been immediately trusted by everyone, cannot comprehend. 

His heart beats faster. He feels no fear as he jumps out into open space, on a crazy plan to let his new arm form a brain that allows Sam Holt to hack into Sendak’s ship. What’s one more violation at this point? 

As he fights Sendak, Shiro becomes what he was in the arena. A warrior, a survivor, a Champion. What he could do then  _ despite _ his body becomes easy to do  _ because _ of this new one. But it’s still not enough. They’re hurtling down towards earth and all Shiro can think is,  _ If I lose, it will be the second time that Sendak will have escaped because of me _ . 

It’s a debilitating thought, one that dregs up every nightmare he’s ever had of this giant cat-face with its monocle over cruel yellow eyes. 

He crashes to the ground and can’t get up. 

“Victory or death,” Sendak says, and they’re his last words because Keith has sliced him in half while in mid-air. 

_ Oh, Sendak. None of us stands a chance against him. We never have. _

Shiro tries to keep his eyes open but it’s a struggle. He can’t breathe. Sendak is dead. Sendak is really  _ dead _ . He feels the need to poke his flesh and blood hand through the wound Keith left in Sendak’s body to make sure. 

He’s passing out in Keith’s arms again. They should really talk about this. The way Keith holds him, delicate against the port on his right shoulder, firm grip on the left shoulder, this is something they should talk about. Keith, his right arm in the Red Lion, has always held him closer on his broken side, as if shielding it from the world with his body. 

He almost prefers the way Hunk slings him into a fireman’s carry towards the Atlas. It’s more humbling, but it’s…  _ simpler _ .

The relief over Sendak’s death lasts all of two doboshes and then there’s the latest horror, a silvery-white robeast that is sucking the marrow out of a prone Voltron like a hyena digging out entrails. 

Shiro’s mind stutter-steps, and the Atlas transforms to his will. It’s nothing like the Black Lion. It’s enormous and unwieldy and has all the dexterity of an infant taking its first steps, but it buys them the time they need. 

Except that the systems are shutting down, and when they come back up, the lions are carrying the beast’s body out of the earth’s atmosphere. The words that come in over the comms are harrowing and make  _ no sense whatsoever. _ Yes, a surge. Yes, self-destructing. 

But then, “It’s been a privilege flying with you all,” Keith says, and that can only mean goodbye. 

Sam Holt staggers, his jaw working uselessly to mouth the word  _ Katie _ , and Shiro steadies him without a thought using his Altean arm. Veronica is frozen, staring at the screen where Lance’s vitals are shown. Coran screams, his shriek so high-pitched Shiro almost laughs, because this has to be a joke. The lions… they can’t be crashing out of the sky, can they?

He doesn’t move for a long time, then his throat works. He sends them to the lions they’d go to anyway, instructs Rizavi, Leifsdottir and Kinkade to take Coran, Sam and Veronica to the Blue, Green and Red lions. He is about to send Griffin to get Hunk, but Griffin’s already on his way to Keith, so Shiro goes for Hunk himself. It turns out to be important that he did. Hunk landed in bad shape in the middle of a former Galra labor camp, and Hunk’s parents are only slightly mollified to know that the great Takashi Shirogane himself came to take Hunk to the hospital. There are more reparations to be made there, but Shiro knows, with a guilty conscience, that they have always asked the most of Hunk and offered him the least. 

Luckily, Hunk is the first to wake up, on the way to the Garrison hospital, asking, “Where’s Keith?” ignoring even his parents.

“Griffin went to get him,” Shiro says. “Rest.”

“Pidge?” 

“Sam’s on his way. Rest, Hunk. Your parents are here.”

The reports come in quick and matter-of-fact. Lance, Allura and Pidge are banged up but they’ll recover. Griffin is terse, and what he doesn’t say leaves Shiro shuddering.

He’s going to have to be the one to call Krolia. He spends the rest of the ride back thinking about the words he’s going to have to use. It keeps him from thinking about Keith.

It’s another hour before the adrenalin starts to wear out of his body. He’s cold and sweaty and has to pee something fierce. He stinks. He doesn’t want to close his eyes and then wake up wondering whether Sendak is still alive. He wants something else he can’t name. He wishes he were back in the Black Lion’s consciousness again, where at least he had a reason to feel helpless. 

He’d made peace with his death. Nobody asked his permission before they forced him to live through another war. He’s angry about that too. 

When Colleen arrives to take care of Pidge, Shiro extricates Sam to get communications out to the rest of the universe. He asks Shay and Matt to come. He finally finds the words for Krolia. 

“He’s strong, but he’s been through a lot. He needs you. Come home.”

“We’re on our way, Shiro.” 

It’s easier than he thought. In the five minutes where there’s nothing left to do, he stares at a screen without being able to read a single word. Someone leads him to his bunk, but he has no memory of it. He falls asleep in his clothes and doesn’t wake up for a long time.

When he does, he feels distant and removed from everything. He’s ready to play the role, just another show like the one Voltron put on. He gives speeches. He comforts mourners. He organizes teams of rescuers. He lets dozens of strangers hug him, because they need to feel real. He feels nothing himself. 

Again, it is Krolia who notices. She leaps out of her ship and asks, “Where is he?” almost running to Keith’s room before Shiro offers to drive her there faster. Kolivan is moving more slowly, still recovering from his long captivity, and Shiro can sense Krolia’s inclination to leave him behind and rush to her son’s side. 

They drive in tense silence, and Shiro says, “It’s because of Keith that Earth knows to welcome the Blade, even so soon after the Galra invasion.”

For a moment, Krolia stares at him aghast, then says, “Huh. I guess that makes you pod-person Shiro now.”

She elaborates upon seeing his confusion, “Keith and I saw many Shiros when we were stuck in the quantum abyss. We saw the clone who attacked him. Evil Shiro. We saw who you were to him when you were both young at the Garrison. Big brother Shiro.”

Shiro’s face grows hot. “I’m not ever going to be able to be that Shiro again.”

“Good,” Krolia says casually. “It’s not what anybody needs right now.”

_ Which version of me does he need?  _ comes immediately to Shiro’s mind, quickly followed by,  _ Everyone wants something out of you, even him. _

There is no separation anymore. It’s not the clone’s thought, it’s his.

They arrive at the hospital and Krolia goes straight to Keith’s bedside and takes his hand. She’s very tactile, Shiro notices. So was Keith, before. It’s easier to notice now that Keith never touches him anymore except when he’s about to die. 

He’s back to doing speeches. He’s in the middle of one when Keith wakes up. He doesn’t know how to react. 

It’s as if he’s waiting for a script, because he’s forgotten how to just  _ be _ . He doesn’t trust his thoughts, his words, or his limbs not to betray him, and so he’s waiting in limbo again, just not in the astral plane. Going through the motions, saying the expected things, feeling nothing. 

Pod-person Shiro indeed. 

The numbness continues while the paladins recover, and he’s grateful he has the Atlas now so he never has to answer Keith’s question about being the Black Paladin again. 

He misses Black. He has a horror of being in Black ever again. These two thoughts can coexist, just as the Shiro who loves Keith and the Shiro who resents him can coexist in one body.

Shiro wonders if Keith knows that of all the lions, Black is the most complex. Red might be wild and stubborn, but Black once kidnapped him to face off against Zarkon in the astral plane in some weird space-duel over her fealty. 

Black, true to her name, has a dark side. She is drawn to power, as was Zarkon. As is Shiro, now. Keith, for all his fury and hurt, does not have a dark side. There will always be parts of Black that he’ll never know. Things she would do for him if he wished it, but he never will. 

Things Shiro could teach him, but he never will. 

He watches Keith recover his strength and flexibility, sparring with James Griffin as if exorcising decade-old demons. Shiro wonders what it was Griffin said to earn that punch. He suspects it was the same thing he himself said to Keith at the clone facility. Keith’s wounds are an open book. 

James straddles Keith and brings his knife close to Keith’s neck. Shiro gasps at the flicker of memory. James is distracted, turns to look at him. Keith easily wraps his legs around James’ neck and flips him down, reversing their positions. 

“Too easy,” Keith says. “You’re not even paying attention.”

“Shiro?” Griffin asks. “Is everything all right?” 

Keith looks at him then, and his face shifts into concern. It’s an unfortunate reality of their lives that Shiro knows intimately what Keith’s “Shiro is dying” face looks like. 

“I’m fine, really.”

He backs away and goes back to his bunk. Pain courses through his nerves, an icy pinch. 

_ Well, that’s something. Feeling pain is better than feeling nothing at all. _

Keith follows him into his bunk. The door closes behind him. 

“Shiro?”

_ He’s just going to keep saying your name until you pay attention to him. He needs you to be okay. He doesn’t care about what you need. _

The voice in Shiro’s head is his own. It’s not the clone’s. The rage is his. The hurt is his. The love is his too. 

“Shiro, what’s wrong?”

He doesn’t know how to answer, so he shoves at Keith’s shoulders. Keith staggers back, but not too far. Shiro’s hands haven’t let him go. They’re just holding him there at arm’s length, too far away to be interpreted as anything other than a rejection, too close to actually be one. 

“It’s all right, Shiro. I’ll go. Take all the space you need, okay? You don’t have to open up to me if you don’t want to.”

Keith tries to turn, but Shiro’s hands close in on him. The Altean hand he’s still getting used to digs into Keith’s arm and there’s a flicker of pain on his face. 

_ Ha! You can cause him pain. That’s about all you can do for him. _

“Sometimes I hate myself,” Shiro says. “I hate being alive and remembering everything I’ve done. I hate waking up every night wondering if Sendak is really dead, if I’m really alive. I hate that you were the one who killed him. You took even that from me.”

Keith swallows, but doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t attempt to move closer or mollify him in any way. 

“Keith—”

“I love you, Shiro.” He says it without a trace of anger or sorrow or pity. It’s just a fact, the way he said it to Krolia before they parted ways. 

“ _ Stop saying that _ .”

“Why? Because you’re afraid it means I want you to say it back? I don’t. I told you because I needed you to know. You’re loved, Shiro. Whether you’re the Black paladin or not. Whether you’re useful to the mission or not. Whether—” his voice cracks, “whether you forgive me or not.”

“Forgive  _ you _ ?”

Keith smiles. It’s a bitter, self-deprecating smile that never reaches his eyes. “You know, for all those things you hate me for.”

Shiro blinks. Keith extricates himself and heads for the door. Shiro bends over, because he can’t breathe and his vision is swimming. He’s not prepared for a Keith who doesn’t need him. 

_ If he needed you, you couldn’t love him so much. _

The words just won’t come. He blinks away tears, sees Keith hesitating at the door. Time was, Keith would come running over to ask him what was wrong. Shiro would have been his entire world. But Shiro has been tired of holding the weight of the world on his shoulders long before he became the captain of the Atlas. 

“Keith, wait.”

Keith stands by the door, arms folded across his chest. Someone really ought to tell him it isn’t good for a leader to seem so closed off. 

_ You’re one to talk. _

Shiro is breathing glass into his lungs again. Every wheeze is painful. Keith comes closer but doesn’t move to help. 

Shiro clutches the edges of a table. His Altean right arm leaves a dent in the sheet-metal.

“Sit down and put your head between your knees,” Keith says, and Shiro complies before a single thought can form in his head. There’s something about Keith’s paladin voice Shiro has never heard before. It’s not strength or bravado, not that false optimism Shiro himself has put on in the face of danger. It’s self-assurance. Keith no longer doubts himself. 

“Breathe with me.”

Shiro does. His vision stops swimming, but he doesn’t lift his head. Shame fills him as he recalls everything he just said. 

“You said you hate me for killing Sendak,” Keith says. “You said I took  _ even _ that from you. What else did I take, Shiro?”

Shiro doesn’t answer.

“Shiro, you hate conflict about as much as I hate small-talk. I’m not angry. I just want to know everything you’re holding against me.” 

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“But you did, and I’m glad. It explains a lot. I’d rather know now than wonder forever.”

Shiro blinks away tears, hoping Keith can’t see his eyes while his head still hangs between his knees. 

“Shiro, I took the Black Lion from you. I took your arm. I took your right to avenge yourself against Sendak. Tell me, what else did I take?” 

_ My right to die on my own terms. Adam tried to take it. You actually took it.  _

Shiro doesn’t say it. It would be a wound they wouldn’t recover from. 

There’s a flash of light and a buzz, and Keith manifests the black bayard as a sword between them. 

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know.” 

Keith is staring at the bayard, lost in thought. There’s something unrecognizable in his eyes. Not the simple fury that would arise over the slightest bait. This is a deeper anger, one that Keith himself seems surprised by. 

“I didn’t ask for it. It just came to me.” Keith frowns. “I think Black wants me to use it against you, but that doesn’t make any sense.”

Shiro is so surprised he laughs, and promptly chokes on his own saliva and coughs. 

“What is it?” Keith asks, his eyes wide and vulnerable. 

“Oh Keith, she’s several thousand years old but she doesn’t understand how a real leader could stand to share. She thinks the only way to lead is—”

“Victory or death,” Keith finishes. He closes his eyes and concentrates. The sword disappears.

“Keith,” Shiro says kindly, “Black wouldn’t have sent you the bayard unless on some level you wanted to hurt me.”

Keith Kogane, zero poker face, just  _ crumbles _ . He covers his face with his hands. His shoulders shake with sobs. 

Shiro reaches over to touch his shoulder. He should be surprised but isn’t when Keith snarls and shoves him off, his eyes Galra-yellow with rage. 

Keith runs out of the room and Shiro leans back against the wall and bangs his head against it in frustration. 

He’s surprised to find himself feeling more relaxed, more  _ himself _ , than he has in a long time. 

They go back to avoiding each other after that. A week later, Shiro is walking through the hallways of the Atlas, touching the walls to ground himself, when he hears Lance shouting in the cafeteria and goes to investigate. 

He arrives too late to see who threw the first punch, but not too late to hear Lance say, “Even if it  _ is _ true, it would be because Keith was slumming it!”

He promptly gets punched by Kinkade, and stumbles around the room on his long legs comically holding his jaw.

“Break it up, guys!”

“Shiro!” Lance cries out, coming over to clutch his lapels. “Good, you’re here. You can tell them. They wanted to know why you wanted Keith to lead Voltron in your place.”

“Why was that even a question? Black chose him.”

The room falls quiet, and nobody meets Shiro’s eyes. The insinuation is clear, that Black only chose Keith because Shiro wanted it. And that Shiro only wanted it because— 

“Keith never wanted to lead Voltron,” Shiro says, hoping he doesn’t sound bitter. “He only did it because he had to. He’s never been in this for the glory. He was willing to give up his only tie to his past if it would help us win an ally in the fight against Zarkon.”

Crickets. Shiro squints at the awkward cadets.

“What am I missing? Lance? What’s this really about?”

Lance mutters something inaudible. Shiro folds his arms across his chest. 

“They said Keith had a history of using his relationships with people in positions of power to get special treatment.” 

“Is that what Griffin said?” Shiro asks the others. 

It’s Leifsdottir who responds. She seems to have the most objective view of most situations, so Shiro is inclined to believe her when she says, “It was what Griffin once said, but if he still thought it was true he wouldn’t be spending three nights a week in Keith’s bunk.” 

Now it’s Shiro who has to restrain himself from throwing punches. But if he did, he’d come across as jealous, validating their theory about him and Keith. He keeps his calm. 

“What Griffin and Keith do is none of our business. If it makes for greater trust between Earth’s MFE fighters, Voltron and the Blade of Marmora, it ought to be in everyone’s interest that they work out any past differences.”

Yup, he really is pod-person Shiro. His mouth says all the appropriate things, while he hears the words come out as if they’re being spoken by someone else. This dissociation is not wholly unexpected, or even unwelcome. Shiro doesn’t know what he actually feels about Keith and Griffin sleeping together. He just knows he doesn’t have the luxury of feeling anything in public. 

“I told you,” Lance announces triumphantly, still cradling his bruised cheek. “Keith doesn’t need anything from James, Shiro or any of us.”

Lance’s face falls as he realizes what he just said. It reminds Shiro how young Lance is, how he went from being a beloved part of a large family to being alone in space with strangers who outshone him in skill after skill, and to being led by his greatest rival. 

“We all need each other, Lance.” 

“Yeah,” Lance says, but he doesn’t sound convinced. 

“At any rate, fighting  _ will _ result in disciplinary action if I ever catch any of you at it again.”

They hop to attention and apologize, suddenly reminded that they stand in Captain Shirogane’s presence. It makes Shiro’s head hurt, and he realizes he hasn’t eaten all day. He sometimes forgets, unused to having a body with such mundane needs. 

He goes to the kitchen and finds Hunk showing Shay and his parents some of his best space-meal creations. The family turns to him as one, amplifying and radiating Hunk’s warmth to him as if they already know he needs it. 

“Hey Shiro, do you want to try this? It’s my best attempt to recreate the space-taco as, you know, an actual taco. You know, now that we’re back on earth and we have tacos again.”

“Thanks, Hunk.”

The taco tastes like a taco, but he’s not going to tell Hunk that. He makes an exaggerated sound of approval, and asks for another. 

“Uh, that was the placebo batch,” Hunk says, looking at once hurt and suspicious. “The real batch is over there. I was going to run a blind taste-test.”

“Sorry, I haven’t eaten all day.”

Hunk immediately fills his plate with food, and insists he sit down and eat right there where he can make sure Shiro actually swallows down the food instead of leaving it be while reading up on something work-related. 

Shiro thinks about nothing, just chews for a while. The next time he hears anything of the conversation around him, it’s because they’re talking about Keith.

“I mean, I know Keith’s probably okay, and he’s probably glad not to be in close quarters with everyone,” Hunk is saying, “and Pidge too, but she likes hearing us on the comms or playing games with us even if we’re not in the same room. But it’s just not the same anymore. I miss him.”

“Has Keith not been keeping up your paladin training?” Shiro asks, and immediately regrets it. There’s accusation in his voice and he knows it. He’s not the leader of Voltron. It’s none of his business how the paladins train or don’t train. And the war is over, for now. 

“He’s still recovering,” Hunk says, immediately defensive. “He was closest when the blast hit. He tries to keep up the routines, but he… he’s not been doing that great.”

Hunk’s face falls, and Shiro’s lungs turn to ice. He watches with slowly growing horror as Hunk’s family envelops him in sympathy. 

“I just want to be there for him, you know?” Hunk says. “When the Garrison wouldn’t send fighters to rescue you guys, he was the only one who listened. He took me out that night to at least see you from over the wall. He and James and Veronica. Seeing you, even for a little while, it’s what gave me the strength to keep fighting.”

Shiro can’t breathe. He needs to get out of here, before whatever feeling is nudging at him takes over his body and leaves him reeling and out of control. 

“Oh, Shiro! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to say you weren’t being there for him. I know he’s always said you’re his greatest strength.”

“I’ve got to go,” Shiro says through his teeth. 

He barely makes it back to his bunk before he collapses on his knees, gasping for breath. If Shiro is Keith’s greatest strength, they’re  _ quiznacked _ . 

He’s half-expecting Hunk or Keith to chase after him. There’s no way Hunk just let him go in his current state. But when the door finally opens, it’s Pidge. 

“Who knew the shortest straw could walk?” Shiro says, and laughs at his own joke.

“We all talked. Keith said you wouldn’t want to see him. Care to tell me why?”

Shiro shakes his head.

“The thing between him and Griffin, it’s just stress-release. Two years on a space whale with nobody but your mom for company leaves no time to explore your biology.”

“It’s not that.” 

  
  
“Isn’t it?” Pidge asks. “You spent a lot of time in my Lion. I know whose name you cried out in your sleep.”

“Pidge!” 

“Relax. I never told anyone. I get that you two shouldn’t be around each other right now, but you may want to intervene before he accidentally kills Griffin.” 

Shiro throws her a puzzled look. 

“Whatever you said to him the other day, he stopped pulling his punches with James. The guy looks more bruised than a tomato that’s been used as a bouncing ball.”   
  


“Is Griffin all right?”

“His pride probably got the worst of it.”

Shiro sighs. “How do I fix this?”

“This, being?”

“I don’t know how to be what Keith needs me to be.”

Pidge doesn’t say anything, but the lines between her eyebrows tell Shiro she’s annoyed. 

“What?”

“What makes you think Keith needs you to be anything but yourself?”

“I don’t know who that is anymore.” 

Pidge says nothing. Shiro wishes she would come back with some wisdom about how people are more than their memories, more than their bodies, but maybe having your consciousness implanted into the body of your own clone is enough to nuke any nature vs. nurture debate to meaninglessness. 

Eventually Pidge sighs. “I don’t know, Shiro. All I know is that he could have killed you, but he didn’t. He held back. And you could have loved him, but you’re holding back.”

“There’s a finality to both love and death, Pidge. I was prepared for one, but not the other.”

“So you do know the answer to fixing this,” Pidge says. “And the Black Lion doesn’t let cowards pilot her.”

She leaves him to his thoughts, to the abyss of self-pity, guilt, resentment and grief he’s been staving off to win the war. But the war is mostly won, and there’s nowhere left to hide. He weeps for a long while.

Then he goes to find Keith. 

  
  



End file.
